


Roses for Scent

by Sholio



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, First Dates, First Time, Fix-It of Sorts, Undead Owen Harper
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26790742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Owen and Tosh have that date after all.
Relationships: Owen Harper/Toshiko Sato
Comments: 12
Kudos: 45
Collections: Hold Me: A Comfort Prompfest





	Roses for Scent

**Author's Note:**

> For a prompt at [Comfort Fest](https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1347813.html): _Torchwood: Owen and Tosh go on that promised date, he feels like anything sexual is out of the question and feels terrible about it, but she figures out a way or a satisfying substitute._

It had been, actually, a very nice evening. Owen was still a little stunned about that.

They'd ordered wine, and Tosh had pasta. Owen had ordered a salad, that he'd picked at — he had some vague idea of claiming a diet if anyone asked, but no one did ask. Probably waiters saw _far_ weirder things than a bloke poking at a salad with a fork and not eating any of it (especially in Cardiff). He poured most of his wine into Tosh's glass when no one was looking, with the general result that, by the time they left the restaurant, she was loose and giggly and cheerful.

And ... he'd had fun. Was still having fun. Her flat was just around the corner, so he walked her back, through a cool, damp late-summer Welsh evening with puddles rippling under streetlights but no actual rain falling. She was telling a story about her roommate in uni, giggling all the while, and maybe it was a contact high off her wine, given that he was as stone-cold sober as he had been for every day since his untimely demise, but he was actually finding it funny. Or maybe it was just Tosh. Her laugh was infectious; it made him laugh too, maybe more than he'd laughed in months.

How had he not _seen_ her, for so long? He had an arm around her shoulders, and he couldn't quite feel her warmth, but he could smell the sweet fragrance of her perfume along with the lingering, fruity-vinegary scent of the wine.

And then they reached the door of her building, and she turned to him hopefully as she got out her key, and it was like cold water being dashed over him.

"Tosh," he said. He let his arm slide off her shoulders, all too aware, now — as he hadn't been a few minutes earlier — that he had no body heat to share; selfish bastard, he'd probably been making her colder by holding onto her like that ...

"Come up, Owen," she said, smiling at him.

There was a world of invitation in that smile. He'd had plenty of birds smile at him like that, back in those days after Katie and before Diane. He knew all the steps to this dance. Except now, the ground had been pulled out from under his feet.

He took a step back.

"Owen," Tosh said. The warm invitation froze somewhat, and she took a step forward, and caught his unbandaged hand.

He tried to pull away. He'd ... managed to forget, almost, what his dead flesh had to feel like to the living. But he didn't try hard; she had hold with both hands, and Tosh had a very strong grip. He didn't need to break another finger.

"No blood flow, Tosh," he said, harsher than he intended to. "You know what that means."

Tosh frowned, almost pouting. "If it's all about putting it in for you, I can only expect you must have sent a good many disappointed women home."

"Oi!" he said, stung. He'd always prided himself on pleasing his partner, woman or man; it was one of the things he was _good_ at, damn it. "I didn't leave customers unsatisfied, love. Ask anyone."

"Well, then, prove it," she said, and she still had hold of him. When did Tosh get so ... well, _stubborn?_

It was somehow more than he could manage to turn her down.

And somehow then he was in her lobby, up her narrow stair — and into her flat.

He had been to Tosh's flat a couple of times, always for work. Now he looked around curiously, almost as if seeing it for the first time. It was different, looking around the flat of a girl you meant to shag. 

... except it wasn't, though, was it? It was still Tosh's flat, and Tosh was Tosh, just the same as when he'd been here a few months ago to drop her off when she was sick and dizzy after that poisoning incident with the alien drugs. He'd left her on her bed, lying on top of a dark red duvet — pulled a blanket over her, tucked her in, made sure water and painkillers and the telly remote were close at hand. It was the one and only time he'd been in Tosh's bedroom, and all he'd done was kiss her on her damp, cool forehead and leave her alone.

From what he could see of the doorway into her bedroom from here, she still had the same red duvet.

Meanwhile Tosh was in the kitchen, and there was some rattling and clinking, and then she said loudly, "Oh _bollocks."_

Owen heard much worse every day of the week, but it was so startling from prim and proper Tosh that he caught himself laughing; he couldn't help it. And that broke the tension a little. "What's wrong?" he asked, joining her in the kitchen, where she was standing with a bottle of Scotch in one hand and a pair of glasses in the other.

"Oh ... I — I was going to make us drinks." There were two spots of color on her cheeks, and for the first time all evening, she looked truly flustered, almost ashamed.

"Tosh," Owen said gently. A warm flood of ... _something_ welled up in his chest, almost uncontrollable. He still didn't know how he felt emotions, when it shouldn't be possible; all those chemicals, all those neural pathways were long since shut down. But he did, and just as intensely as he'd ever felt them before. Maybe it was like a phantom limb. Ghost pain. Phantom love, phantom desire, ephemeral and liable to vanish at any moment.

But he reached forward, and touched her chin, and pulled her forward before he could come to his senses about just what, exactly, his cold lips would feel like on hers.

Tosh opened her mouth with a soft, glad sound.

If she minded, he couldn't tell. The sensation wasn't quite there anymore — except it _was,_ in that odd phantom-limb way. He didn't feel pain, didn't feel the extremes of heat and cold like he used to, and everything was dulled as if his body was encased in muffling wool. But it wasn't total numbness. He _did_ still feel, whether it was something real or a combination of prioperception and the power of suggestion. Sensation was at least partly made up of suggestion; test subjects shown pictures of something strong-smelling — an onion, a rose — actually thought they could smell it, even above the smell of actual, physical objects ...

Bloody hell. These were appropriate thoughts to be having with Tosh's mouth all over his, Tosh's hand knotted in his hair, Tosh half climbing him ...

He still remembered how to kiss a woman, didn't he? All in muscle memory, that was. One hand on her flexing waist, just above the curve of her hip; the other cupping her jaw, fingers spread through her silky hair. Lips and tongue knew what their business was about.

Muscle memory. Phantom limbs. Maybe his whole body was a phantom limb now. But ... even though the nerves to a missing limb might not be responding to something real, they lit up the brain just the same.

He had no heartbeat to quicken, no breath to come faster, but he felt both as she broke away from his cold, dead lips. She didn't look like a woman who'd just kissed a dead man. Her eyes were bright and hot and alive, her lips parted, her cheeks flushed.

"You know," she said, looking up at him with her hands wrapped around the back of his neck, fingers playing in his hair. "I've been reading about sex lately —"

"Welcome to the club, Tosh; what do you think the _rest_ of us are doing while we're supposed to be working —"

"I'm trying to be serious," she protested, to his grin. "I've been reading about what happens with sex in the brain and body if you're paraplegic, or quadriplegic, about how that works — there are entire _studies_ on this, orgasms are at least partly in the brain, you know —"

She was running her hands up and down the back of his neck, through the short hair on the back of his skull. It shouldn't have been as damned erotic as it was. He couldn't _feel._ He couldn't have an orgasm; several months of sexual frustration said so. There was nothing waiting for him tonight except —

Except Tosh, warm and lovely and all but climbing him.

He wasn't joking about not leaving an unsatisfied customer behind. There was a lot more to pleasing a woman than just the in-and-out. He could at least make sure that Tosh had a very good night.

And ... he hadn't felt _nothing,_ when they'd kissed. He was feeling a lot more than nothing with Tosh's hands on his neck and shoulders, with Tosh pressed up against him.

"Oh hell," he sighed out, and it wasn't quite an answer, but Tosh's pretty lips spread back from her equally pretty teeth, as if he had answered after all. Maybe she did know him just that well.

She pulled his jacket down from his shoulders, and left hers lying on the kitchen floor, and her skirt in a rumpled heap on the carpet on the way to the bedroom.


End file.
